Container tracking at Container Centralen

Container Centralen optimizes the logistics of its 3.5 million CC Containers, that is the standard flower transportation method in Europe.

Container Centralen, CC, is Denmark and Netherland based pooling operator providing returnable transport item services for horticulture, retail and logistics. CC Container, CC’s container type for flower transportation, is the single standard method for transporting flowers and plants throughout Europe. 3.5 million CC Containers are used by more than 23 000 customers in their logistics processes.

CC identified a need for being able to manage the CC Containers more efficiently, specifically prohibit poor quality counterfeit containers ending up into the CC pool circulation. At the same time, Container Centralen saw the need for more precise asset identification both for internal and their customers' use. UHF RFID was the selected technology for CC’s “Operation Chip It!” project, European wide RFID project that was launched together with IBM. In 2011, CC and its customers tagged the complete fleet of CC Containers.

Confidex worked closely as Container Centralen’s and IBM’s RFID tag partner. As a result, a specific custom RFID tag was designed that not only meets the stringent mechanical requirements but also provides reliable RF performance.

Today, RFID helps CC to easily authenticate their assets and manage their pool. Additionally, CC’s customers in the horticultural supply chain are utilizing the technology for optimized logistics. RFID is used in combining the container ID and its content and by that way the receiving processes can be more automated, as an example.

What's being tagged?

During the Operation Chip It! Confidex designed and supplied RFID tags for the CC Container base parts. The design process included various requirements for the RFID tag as well as intensive testing. The container handling process and specifically the width of implementation set certain requirements for the RFID tag mechanics. Besides durability, also the tag installation was required to be fast and to be performed without any tools, screws or adhesives. Additionally, RFID tags needed to have high level personalization including visual marking and high security encoding. By combining these requirements as well as designing the tag to meet the RF performance requirements of the system, Confidex delivered the tags for CC's implementation.

”Confidex’s extensive work in the design and test of a tag specialized for Container Centralen’s specialized environment was the major reason for selecting Confidex as our tag supplier”

“Confidex has worked very closely with IBM throughout the project in order to manage all the different requirements and secure delivery of the tags for this large and challenging RFID project.”

About Container Centralen

CC is 50% owned by Danish flower exporters. The other 50% is owned by VGB - the Dutch Union of Flower Wholesalers. CC is serving more than 23,000 customers in more than 40 countries worldwide, and about 80,000 users (our customers and their business partners) benefit from using the CC System every day. www.container-centralen.com